Some Force Out There
by ebonyandunicorn
Summary: The Doctor appears in Professor Cutter's office and is shocked to hear about the changes in the timeline that occurred. He sets out to reverse them, with Cutter's assistance. Primeval: early season 2. DW: post-Angels Take Manhattan.
1. Introductions

When Professor Nick Cutter entered his office and saw the old-fashioned blue police box standing in the corner of the room, he finally began to wonder if Stephen was right.

Maybe he _was_ just going crazy.

There was, he thought, no other explanation for the police box. Nor was there an explanation for the fact that the box then opened and a man stepped out – but not before Cutter could peek through the door and see that the box was _bigger on the inside_.

"Ah, hello!" the man said cheerfully. He had brown hair that fell like a mop over his face and was wearing a bright red bow tie around his neck. "Professor Cutter, isn't it? Lovely to meet you at last. Charming office you've got here; pity it's so untidy. I may've landed on a fossil or two... but they shouldn't be too difficult to replace, should they?"

Cutter simply stared at him.

"Well! I've heard all about you," the man went on, seemingly oblivious to Cutter's complete shock. "You're working on the anomaly project, aren't you? Rips in the fabric of space and time... hm, yes. Fascinating really. Not to mention more or less unheard of in all of history." He did a full twirl in the centre of the office, his arms spread wide to gesture towards the whole of the room. "What _have_ you been doing in this ARC of yours, Professor?"

"Who the hell are you?" Cutter managed at last.

The stranger clapped his hands together and turned back to him. "Ah, yes! Introductions! Quite right, quite right. Well, you're Nick Cutter, of course – unless my calculations are wrong, and they're never wrong... at least, not when it really matters. I'm the Doctor."

"The doctor of what?"

"Just the Doctor." He gave a wide smile. "I'm sorry to appear out of the blue like this, but I did think it was time we had a bit of a chat."

Professor Cutter was utterly lost by this time. It was a source of great frustration to him, that he could continue to be surprised by anything even after months of working with space-time anomalies and dinosaurs. He decided there was nothing to do but play along with it. After all, he was most likely dreaming or hallucinating, and whichever one it was, it would go away with time. He hoped.

"Take a seat," Cutter said, gesturing towards the empty chair before his desk. He shut the office door behind him and leaned against the wall. "And don't touch anything."

The Doctor winced like a guilty child and retracted his hand, having been caught in the act of reaching for a dinosaur skull. "Right," he said, spinning side-to-side in the chair as he spoke. "Here's the thing, Professor Cutter. I caught wind recently of this whole 'anomaly' business, and I thought I probably ought to investigate."

"Are you with the government?" Cutter asked.

"What? No. Nothing like that." The Doctor flapped a hand. "I'm working on my own." A shadow passed across his face for a moment before he continued. "How do I put this? Let's just say... whenever rips or cracks in spacetime turn up, they're generally bad news."

"You can say that again," muttered the professor.

"Yes – dinosaurs, right? Fascinating." The Doctor, whoever he was, apparently found a great number of things fascinating. It was beginning to get on Cutter's nerves. "So, I've done a bit of research, but I could always use an explanation from an expert. Why don't I get us a cuppa –" he tilted his head towards the blue police box "– and you tell me everything you know about the anomalies?"

Cutter stared at him. "How much time have you got?"

"Oh, I've got all of time."

* * *

The Doctor disappeared into his strange police box and emerged with a tray bearing a teapot and two cups in saucers. "You might have to clear a bit of space on your desk," he said, warily regarding the piles of paper that cluttered the polished wooden surface. Cutter rolled his eyes and began to stack the papers on top of each other, until there was enough room to balance the tray between two piles of paper almost tall enough to touch the ceiling.

"What else does your box do?" Cutter asked, accepting the cup the Doctor passed him.

"That's the TARDIS. What doesn't she do?" The Doctor smiled fondly over at the police box. "_Time And Relative Dimension In Space_. She's sort of like one of your anomalies, except she doesn't let dinosaurs come rampaging through, and she goes where I tell her to – mostly."

"And she's bigger on the inside," Cutter added. The Doctor laughed aloud. Cutter shrugged and took a sip of his tea. Grimacing, he informed the Doctor, "This is cold."

"Is it?" The Doctor made a face. "So sorry. Here, pass it back." He took the mug from Cutter and pulled a strange-looking, pointed device from his pocket. "Sonic screwdriver," he explained, preempting Cutter's question. He pointed the device at the tea and held down a button for several seconds. "Try it now."

Cutter did so. He burned his tongue.

"There we go." The Doctor grinned. "So, these anomalies?"

Cutter put his cup back in its saucer and set them both aside. "Wait," he ordered. "I have a few questions of my own. How do you know who I am, and how did that –" he pointed to the TARDIS "– get in here?"

The Doctor smiled. "I'm a time-traveller, Professor Cutter," he said. "Wouldn't usually be so forward about it, but from what I understand, you've been doing your fair share of travelling yourself. I like to keep myself informed whenever something... unusual crops up. People all through time and space have been talking about these anomalies. I'm surprised you've managed to keep the rest of twenty-first century England out of the loop."

"'All through time and space'?" Cutter repeated. "Just how much of time and space have you explored?"

"Oh, a fair bit."

"And out of all of it, you decided to barge into my office?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Are you complaining? It's just a little bit of excitement to spruce up your day."

"I've had enough excitement to last all of time," Cutter said flatly.

The Doctor took a sip of his tea and screwed up his nose. "Ah. Cold. Right."

He busied himself with the sonic screwdriver, and Cutter took the opportunity to hammer his point home. "I mean it, Doctor," he said emphatically. I'll tell you what I know, but then I want you and your box to go. We've got enough to deal with here without bow-tied doctors and blue boxes and screwdrivers."

The Doctor looked at him over the rim of his cup for a long moment before he nodded. "All right," he said. "Just tell me what you've got."

* * *

Two cups of tea and an hour later, Cutter had brought the Doctor up to speed on everything they knew. It was a relatively quiet day in the ARC and they hadn't been interrupted; Cutter suspected that most of the team – especially Stephen – was avoiding him. It had only been a handful of days since he'd stumbled out of the Permian into a changed world, but he'd made such a fool of himself in that short time that they all thought he had lost it. _Of course_, Cutter reflected, staring at the strange man who had appeared out of a police box that was bigger on the inside, _it's entirely possible that I have_.

"Right," said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair. "Well. Thank you for that, Professor. Most informative." He steepled his fingers and looked at Cutter carefully. "Let me just recap... these anomalies, which appear for reasons unknown, open unpredictably to let through any number of dangerous extinct creatures, which subsequently go out of their way to wreak havoc on most of London. Oh, and when you went _through_ one of these anomalies, you meddled with the past, and somehow you changed the present?"

"That's what I said." Cutter's tone was terse. He'd been questioned about this sort of thing too many times over the last few days.

The Doctor nodded slowly. A moment later he had jumped up and was yanking open the TARDIS. "This is serious!" he declared, snatching Cutter's cup and saucer from the desk and flinging them through the door. Cutter jumped to his feet. "This is a big deal, Professor Cutter," the Doctor said earnestly. "It's not every day someone meddles with time – certainly not a mere human." He threw the rest of the tea things into the TARDIS, wincing a bit the sound of shattering china.

"'Mere human'?" Cutter repeated.

"That's what I said." The Doctor leaped into his TARDIS, turning to hang out the door to bid Cutter farewell. "Anyway, best be off. I've got to fix this. I don't know why it's happening, but it needs to stop. Thanks for your time, Professor! It's been fun. Next time, I'll remember the biscuits." He made to close the door, but Cutter threw his hand out and braced it open.

"Wait."

The Doctor obeyed, pulling the door open again. "Wait what?"

"You said you were going to fix this," Cutter began.

"If I can," the Doctor answered with a nod. "I think I can. I should be able to. Hasn't really happened before, like I said. It'll keep me busy for the next little while, at least. Always good to have something to do."

"Right, right." Cutter waved an impatient hand. "But if you do fix this, does that mean... I mean, is there a chance that... you might reverse the timeline change?"

The Doctor tilted his head. "I guess it's possible."

Cutter hesitated for a second, then pulled his wallet from his pocket, fished out the photo he kept there, and showed it to the Doctor. "This is Claudia Brown."

The Doctor took the photo and glanced at it. "You want me to find her?"

"I want you to bring her back." Cutter stared at him imploringly. "All of time and space, you said. Surely – surely she's there somewhere. If the past changed once, then maybe it can change again."

There was a long pause while the Doctor looked at the photo. At last, he glanced up and met Cutter's gaze. "I've lost friends before," he said quietly, his previous boyish enthusiasm gone. "I know how it feels. I'll do my best, Professor. You have my word."

Cutter didn't respond.

The Doctor gave back the photo and shut the TARDIS door.

Nick turned to survey his office, complete with teacup stains the Doctor had left behind. It was still unfamiliar to him; he'd only been working there for a few days, even if the people with whom he worked remembered him from months ago. Though it was piled high with paper and clutter like his office at the university had been, it was all paper and clutter that had been placed there by another man, another version of himself. There was nothing here that was _his_. Nothing he would be leaving behind.

He turned to knock on the TARDIS again. He'd barely let his fist fall when the door sprung open.

"You're coming along, then?" the Doctor asked brightly.

Cutter shrugged. "Nothing keeping me here."

"That's the spirit." The Doctor clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on in."


	2. First Excursion

It certainly was bigger on the inside. Nick Cutter felt his mouth drop open as he walked into the TARDIS, looking around in awe. There was some kind of command console in the centre of the room, which was definitely larger than the cramped office he'd just stepped out of, and staircases that went both up and down. He wondered where they led to.

"What do you think?" the Doctor asked merrily, clapping his hands as he turned to watch Cutter's reaction.

"It's..." Cutter gestured hopelessly around as he tried to think of something clever to say. It wasn't often that words failed him, but they had done so the first time he had seen an anomaly, and they were doing so now.

The Doctor grinned. "Yep."

"So," Cutter began, when he couldn't think of anything else to say, "where to now?"

For the first time, the Doctor looked sheepish. "Well, actually, that was what I was hoping you'd be able to help me out with. I haven't the faintest, to be perfectly honest with you."

Cutter stared at him.

"It's not my fault!" the Doctor protested, holding up his hands defensively. "You're the anomaly expert. I just travel through space and time, looking for things to do."

"So you don't have any idea about what to do next?"

"Well, of course I've got _ideas_. I just thought I'd ask, you know. Help you to feel included." Looking rather insulted, the Doctor crossed the room to the console in the centre and began to pull complicated-looking levers and type commands into the keyboard. Cutter looked on with an unimpressed expression.

There was a strange noise and suddenly the whole of the TARDIS lurched, causing Cutter to stagger. He managed to grab hold of the nearest bannister and avoid falling over, but only just. Straightening up, he caught the Doctor's amused smirk and answered it with a frown. "Where are we going?" Cutter yelled over the noise.

"Good question!" the Doctor replied. "I've plugged in the data for that key frequency you mentioned, as well as any large magnetic field disturbances, in a timeframe spanning the last hundred years and a spaceframe restricted to England."

"Spaceframe?"

"Yes. I want to see an anomaly, and I figured it'd be sensible to start somewhere nearby."

Cutter frowned. "I thought I told you everything I knew."

"You did, dear Professor, but nothing beats seeing things with your own eyes." As the TARDIS began to settle into its new location, the Doctor pulled a screen down from the top of the command console. "Now, now... when are we?" He pressed a few buttons. "Aha! England, 1998. Excellent. I do love it when the parameters I set actually work." He patted the screen affectionately before turning and striding confidently towards the door. "Come on, then!" he called to Cutter over his shoulder. "We haven't got all of time... well, I suppose that's not strictly true, but there's no sense in taking forever to get started, is there?"

Cutter pushed away from the bannister with a sigh and followed.

The Doctor flung the TARDIS door open with a flourish and stepped out. "Ta-da!" he said triumphantly. "Welcome to... hm." He walked a few steps forward and twirled around, taking in their new location. "Well, I'm not exactly sure _where_ this is, but – aha!"

His attention was summarily distracted by the shimmering white light in the centre of the clearing into which they'd stepped. The anomaly was hovering calmly in midair as though it had been waiting for them. If they had landed anywhere else, Cutter would also have been distracted by the sight. As it was, he was too busy staring around the clearing itself.

"This is the Forest of Dean," he said.

* * *

"What was that?" the Doctor asked, pulling his gaze away from the anomaly in front of him.

Cutter gestured around the trees. "The Forest of Dean," he repeated. Though it was late in the evening and the clearing was lit only by moon and stars, he recognised this place far too well. Here was where he had entered an anomaly for the first time... and here was where he had left Claudia Brown with false promises – _It's gonna be fine _and_ I'll see you soon_ – and had lost her to a new timeline and a changed world.

"Oh." The Doctor, who had been told about both of these events, understood. "Right. Well." He looked back at the anomaly, as though he couldn't think of anything else to say. "S'pose this is as good a place to start as any, then, eh?" He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and approached the anomaly cautiously, as though he were expecting it to bite him. When he was about a metre away, he held out the screwdriver in preparation to scan.

"Careful –" Cutter began.

The screwdriver was pulled from the Doctor's hand into the anomaly.

"I did tell you to be careful," Cutter said.

The Doctor turned his disbelieving gaze on Cutter. "I heard what you said! That doesn't – I mean – how –"

"Anomalies cause a powerful magnetic field," the professor answered mildly, struggling to keep a straight face. "I did mention it. Your screwdriver apparently has enough metallic components to be affected."

The Doctor's face was rapidly turning red, though whether from anger or embarrassment Cutter couldn't tell. He also seemed incapable of speech. "I – that's – but – oh, blast it!" He stamped his foot and Cutter lost it, dissolving into laughter. "It's not funny!" the Doctor shouted. "That's my sonic screwdriver that's gone through there!"

"Yes it is," Cutter gasped over his laughter, though it was not clear to which part of the Doctor's sentence he was referring.

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, turned in a circle, and straightened his bow tie. "Fine," he said at last, facing the anomaly straight on. "Fine. I'm just going to march through there and get it back."

That put an end to Cutter's laughter. "Don't do that."

"Well, I have to!" the Doctor answered. "It's my screwdriver."

"You can't," Cutter replied. "That anomaly leads to the Permian Era, in which all manner of dangerous creatures live. Even if you aren't eaten by a Gorgonopsid, you could meddle with the past somehow and change something in the present."

"Oh, please," the other man scoffed. "I'm the Doctor. I think I know how to avoid changing things in the present... unlike _some_ people."

"Don't you dare," Cutter snapped, taking a step towards him. "Don't you think for one second that any part of that was intentional. If I could take it all back right now, I'd do it in a second. I'd never go through an anomaly again if it meant reversing the changes and getting her back. I lie awake at night, hating myself for not listening to her when she told me not to go. There's nothing I regret more in my life than stepping through that anomaly and losing her."

As quickly as it had begun, his emotional tirade was over. He'd risen a finger to point accusingly at the Doctor; he quickly let it fall, embarrassed at himself. The Doctor, though, didn't laugh or mock him. He simply nodded slowly, an expression of such sympathy on his face that Cutter had to turn away. "I believe you," he said. "Listen, Professor Cutter. I try to help people. I try to fix things. I'm the Doctor; that's my job. Sometimes... some things can't be fixed. But I'll do everything I can to get her back for you."

Cutter nodded.

"First step, though," the Doctor continued, "is getting my screwdriver back. Won't be a minute!" And before Cutter could say anything more, he'd darted through the anomaly and disappeared from sight.

* * *

The first thing the Doctor noticed was that the Permian Era was _hot_. The sand he'd stumbled onto had been heated by the bright sun overhead and was reradiating its warmth with an unpleasant vigour. Though it was late in the evening back in the present, it felt like the middle of the day in the Permian. There were a few trees dotted around the landscape, but they weren't large enough to provide any sort of shelter or shade. The Doctor loosened his bow tie a little and threw his jacket over one arm before beginning the search for his sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor usually prided himself on being a very truthful person, but there was one thing that he lied about often, and that was how long it would be before he returned. Though he'd promised Cutter he wouldn't be a minute, the Doctor quickly realised that it was going to take much longer than a minute to find a single sonic screwdriver buried in several hundreds of square kilometres of sand. "This is ridiculous," he grumbled, feeling the sweat trickle down his neck as he continued to dig. "How can one screwdriver have managed to completely bury itself?" he asked nobody in particular. "Unless there was a sandstorm within the last fifteen minutes. Oh, I probably shouldn't have said that out loud. Tempting fate and all th – aha!" At last, he bent down and extracted the screwdriver triumphantly from the sand. "There you are. Naughty screwdriver. Promise me you'll never do that –"

He was interrupted midsentence by a furious roar.

"That," he said after a moment, "was a dinosaur."

The strangest thing was, it hadn't sounded like it came from anywhere around him. Rather, it had sounded as though it came from the anomaly itself – from the other side.

"Oh, no," the Doctor groaned. He backed away from the anomaly a few paces, just to be safe. There were several seconds of silence, and then the anomaly pulsed and something charged through.

It was not, however, a dinosaur. It was a woman running flat-out, sweat on her face and dirt on her jeans. She didn't stop or turn around, so she didn't notice the Doctor as she continued her frantic sprint, putting as much distance between herself and the anomaly as she could. The Doctor decided that was a good idea, and he backed up a little more, his gaze darting between the fleeing woman and the anomaly.

A minute later it pulsed a second time, and _then_ came the dinosaur.

It was bigger than a rhinoceros and built like a tank, with two sabre teeth protruding from its enormous mouth. The Doctor held his breath as the huge creature shook its head, roared again, and charged off in pursuit of the woman. He thought about running after them both, but the woman was far away by now, and there wasn't much a Doctor and his screwdriver could do against a dinosaur. Besides, it could have wreaked havoc in the present before returning. His heart lurched as he remembered Cutter and his TARDIS on the other side. Clutching the sonic screwdriver tightly in his hands, the Doctor stepped back through the anomaly and into the Forest of Dean.

* * *

Night had fallen, and the Doctor had to squint while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a few moments before he spotted the TARDIS; its blue coat blended in fairly well with the shadows and the trees. He ran over to it and zapped it with his screwdriver to make sure that it hadn't suffered any injury at the hands – or claws – of the dinosaur. "There's a girl," he said, patting her fondly. "I'm glad to see you're safe."

"I was worried about you, too," Cutter murmured sarcastically from somewhere to the Doctor's left. "That was a Gorgonopsid. Permian Era predator. If it had caught you, you wouldn't have stood a chance. Even with your fancy screwdriver."

The Doctor nodded, slipping the sonic into his pocket. "It wasn't chasing me, though," he said. "It was after –"

"A woman, I know," Cutter answered. "I saw her too. She didn't notice me or the box. Too busy running for her life."

"Brown hair," the Doctor offered. "Jeans. Khaki jacket."

Cutter smiled. "I saw," he said. "That was my wife, Helen."


	3. Mistakes

"Your wife?" the Doctor repeated.

Cutter nodded, staring into the anomaly as he spoke. "England, 1998. December 8, to be exact."

"That's today's date. How'd you know that?" the Doctor asked.

"Because that was the day she disappeared."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and then proceeded to look awkwardly around the clearing for a few seconds, as though he wasn't sure how to respond. "You didn't say much about her," he said eventually. "Just that she disappeared about eight years back and returned a few months ago to see you."

"Yep," Cutter answered. "She's the only one besides me who knows that the timeline was changed by whatever we did in the Permian." He dropped his gaze from the anomaly, trying to reconcile himself with what they'd just seen. He'd always wondered just how Helen had first stumbled upon the anomalies, and now he knew. She'd been chased by a Gorgonopsid and had had no choice but to run through – he'd watched it pursue her into their clearing and through the anomaly. She been running so fast she hadn't noticed Cutter or the TARDIS. He wondered what he would have done if she had.

"Professor, are you listening to a word I say?"

Cutter shook his head in an attempt to clear it, but it served to effectively answer the Doctor's question as well. "Sorry," he muttered. "What was that?"

"I was saying that I'm going to try to scan the anomaly again," the Doctor repeated. "If I just hold my sonic tightly, I can keep it from being stolen away again, right?"

"Depends how strong you are against a five-Tesla magnetic field," Cutter answered with a small smile.

The Doctor scowled, but moved forward to attempt the scan anyway. He was holding the sonic screwdriver in both hands now and approached the anomaly with tiny steps, shuffling awkwardly forward until he judged he was close enough. "All right," he said, adjusting his grip so that he could hold down the button on the sonic without letting go of it with either hand. "Let's see what you've got..."

He scanned the anomaly for almost ten full seconds before pulling his hands back with a great tug, stumbling comically backwards. When he'd regained his balance, he frowned at the display. "Hm," he said.

"What does that mean?" Cutter asked.

"It means 'hm'," the Doctor replied helpfully, turning his frown on the anomaly. "That didn't do what I was expecting it to do."

"And what was that?"

"Well, it was informative enough," the Doctor began. "According to the sonic, this particular anomaly is a portal in time and space that leads to the year two hundred and seventy five million, four hundred and sixty three thousand, eight hundred and twelve, and a geographical location roughly in the same place as where Africa is now."

"You could've just said Pangaea in the Permian," Cutter told him. "I _have_ been studying zoology and palaeontology for the past eighteen years."

The Doctor held up his hands. "Sorry, sorry. I should know by now not to underestimate professors." Cutter raised his eyebrows, but his unspoken question was not answered. "Anyway, this anomaly has been present in the present – if you'll pardon the pun – for roughly four hours, but it's not the first time it's opened here."

"Won't be the last, either," Cutter pointed out.

"Hm," the Doctor repeated, staring at the anomaly. "As for what the anomaly actually _is_ – well, I don't think it's like the crack in her bedroom wall, which is good."

"Whose bedroom wall?"

"Amy Pond's," said the Doctor offhandedly, and suddenly there was an expression of such sadness on his face that Cutter had to look away. "Mad, impossible Amy Pond," the Doctor whispered, staring over at the TARDIS. "The girl who waited. Twelve years, all for me, and now I can never see her again. She would have loved this. Or maybe hated it. Never was much of a fan of cracks in time."

Cutter waited for the Doctor to emerge from his reverie; it took a long time. "Sorry," the Doctor muttered at last, finally turning back to Cutter and the anomaly.

"It's okay." Cutter dug his hands into his pockets. "Was she your wife?"

"What?" The Doctor stared at him in shock. "No! Ah, actually... I suppose if you wanted to get technical about it, she was my mother-in-law."

Cutter stared at him in return.

"It's complicated," the Doctor said defensively. "I knew her before my wife was born; well, I knew my wife before I knew her, but I also knew her when she was pregnant with my wife. And my wife didn't know me back then. Except she was being trained to kill me. My wife, not my mother-in-law." He flapped his hands as Cutter continued to stare at him. "Complicated!" the Doctor repeated. "We were talking about the anomaly. As I was saying: it doesn't appear to be malicious or sentient, and as far as I can tell there's no alien intervention. That's a problem."

"_Alien _intervention?"

"Oh, come now, Professor," the Doctor said. "You've been investigating rips in spacetime for months; surely an alien here or there isn't too much more difficult to believe? Besides, I said there _wasn't_ any alien intervention, so if you were travelling with anyone but me, you probably wouldn't get to see one. This anomaly doesn't appear to facilitate interplanetary travel, so we should be safe."

"Right," Cutter managed. "And you said that was a problem because...?"

"Because it means humanity is responsible," the Doctor explained.

* * *

"You don't know that," Cutter said.

"Oh, I think I do, Professor." The Doctor tapped his sonic screwdriver. "Trust me, if any form of life aside from humans and dinosaurs had been through that, I'd know about it. As it is, it's only been your wife, me, and our charming Permian friend so far. Not a whiff of any non-Earthen species."

The fact that non-Earthen species even _existed_ was enough to blow Cutter's mind, but he did his best to focus on the situation at hand. "How on Earth did you figure that all out using a screwdriver?"

The Doctor grinned at him. "Well, considering the technology wasn't invented on Earth at all, it wasn't actually that difficult. Simple material scan – there are traces of DNA within the anomaly from exactly one human, one Time Lord, and one dinosaur."

"_Time Lord?_"

"Ah," said the Doctor. "Yes. That's me."

"What the hell is is a Time Lord?"

The Doctor smiled a little sadly. "We were the rulers of the greatest civilisation in the universe once," he said. "The planet Gallifrey, the pinnacle of learning and knowledge. Of course... that was before the war. I'm the only one left, now."

Cutter stared at him. "So you're an alien."

"Correct. Your very own time-travelling, two-hearted, from-another-planet alien."

Nick Cutter could only shake his head, well and truly beyond being shocked by now. Spacetime anomalies and dinosaurs were one thing; aliens and interplanetary travel were something else entirely. Rather than attempt to apply anything close to logic to this utterly unbelievable situation, Cutter changed the topic to something he understood just a little bit better. "So you were saying before that the anomalies are our fault? That someone somewhere did something to create them?"

"Someone some_when_," the Doctor corrected. "But, yes. Unless I'm very much mistaken, one of your humans is responsible for the appearance of these anomalies. Our next step is to figure out who – and why."

"That's what you were expecting to get from the scan?"

"Yes. I wanted to figure out exactly what the anomaly _is_ – what it's made of, where it came from, why it's there. I got none of that, really." He looked at the screwdriver again. "Couldn't close it either. That's worrying. If the sonic can't do it, I'm not sure what can."

Cutter frowned. "I thought you were the expert in spacetime portals."

"I am." The Doctor shoved the sonic screwdriver back into his pocket and turned back to the TARDIS. "All right. Come on, then."

"Where are we going?" Cutter demanded. There was annoyance in his voice; he was getting sick of trailing after the Doctor with little to no explanation of where (or when) they would end up. Cutter had never been good at following orders – or people.

"Not far," the Doctor said, striding into the police box. "I'm just going to plug the data from the anomaly into the TARDIS and examine it more carefully. Hopefully we can plot some sort of map of similar magnetic field disturbances all over Earth, and maybe figure out when the first anomaly appeared. Then it's only a simple matter of going there, finding out who made it and why, and closing them all down. Plus reversing the changes you made when you messed around in the past, and ensuring that these anomalies never open up again anywhere in the universe."

"You have an unusual definition of 'simple'," Cutter told him.

The Doctor beamed. "I know." He aimed the sonic at a screen in the middle of the TARDIS and pressed the button. Information began to fill the screen, scrolling down in complicated symbols and lines that made no sense to Cutter. "Hm," the Doctor said yet again, leaning close to read it. "All right. This might take a while to download." He turned back to Cutter and clapped his hands together. "In the meantime... fancy some more tea?"

* * *

For the second time in a day, Cutter found himself taking tea with a Time Lord. Though, he reflected, if you thought about it, it was only the second time in eight and a half years, and that was only if you were allowed to count backwards. Feeling a headache building behind his eyes, Cutter tested the temperature of the tea dubiously with his finger, but the . "How do you do it?" he burst out.

"Do what?" the Doctor asked, pouring a disproportionately large volume of milk into his cup.

"This." Cutter gestured impatiently around at the TARDIS. "All of it. Keep track of where and when you are. Figure out how you can change things without, you know, _changing_ things. Meddle with time while still managing to stay sane."

The Doctor smiled. "They don't call us Time Lords for nothing. I've had a lot of practice."

"How much practice?" Cutter asked, knowing he'd regret it as soon as he got an answer.

"'Bout twelve hundred years."

Relieved that he hadn't had his cup to his lips when the Doctor spoke, Cutter nevertheless choked a little upon hearing the response. "Right," he managed at last. "That makes me feel _much_ better."

"As it should. I _do_ have experience with this sort of thing, you know."

"You ever make mistakes?" Cutter asked.

The Doctor put his cup quickly back into his saucer, a tremor in his hand causing it to rattle. He regarded Cutter with a serious expression that seemed out of place on his otherwise youthful visage. "Everyone makes mistakes," he said evenly. "Even me."

"Ever erased a woman from time?"

The Doctor didn't flinch. "Once I erased myself from time."

"Evidently you didn't do a very good job."

The Doctor put his cup and saucer aside. "What are you asking, Professor Cutter?" he wanted to know. "Do you not trust me?"

"I trust you," Cutter answered. "I just know that time travel isn't all fun and games."

The Doctor folded his arms. "All right," he said eventually. "No, it's not. Sometimes people get hurt. Sometimes people get lost. Once, I travelled with a woman – the most important woman in all of creation. In the end I had to wipe all her memories of me. If she saw me in the street, she wouldn't know who I was. If she were allowed to remember, her mind would burn and she would die." Cutter opened his mouth to cut the Doctor off, but he didn't get the chance. "Then," the Doctor went on, his eyes hard but his mind far away, "there was a woman who ended up trapped in a parallel universe. I can never see her again; I didn't even get to say a proper goodbye. And then Amy. She's dead now, but not before her husband was killed several times and their daughter stolen because of me – a daughter whose death I witnessed three hundred years from now, but _she doesn't know it yet_. So no, Professor Cutter. It's not all fun and games."

Cutter simply nodded as though the Doctor had confirmed a prediction. "So," he said, "you know what it's like to lose a woman you love because of something you've done."

"All too well," the Doctor whispered.


End file.
